"The way Baz saw her -- the way I've never, ever heard her played -- excited me professionally, especially because I come from theater," says Venora. "His ideas captivated me and gave me confidence to go further, to take risks, the way I used to feel in repertory theater. It's exciting to be able to do that on film."

Britain native Miriam Margolyes, who portrays Juliet's well-meaning, bawdy Nurse, adds that "... this was an astonishing project, and it all comes from Baz and his quite brilliant imagination and perception. He radiated a kind of tightness, excitement and personal commitment that is extremely rare."

Irish actor Pete Postlethwaite, who plays Father Laurence with an American accent, was likewise attracted to the project by Luhrmann's interpretation of the play. "The way the script had been beautifully orchestrated into the modern world drew me to the film. It was excellently done, very exciting, yet very, very faithful and honest to my favorite playwright. Baz is a man with vision. That sounds pat, but he's got a very clear, yet instinctive view and feel for the rhythm of the language, of the plot, the color of things, the size of things, the way the characters work. Verona Beach is an extraordinary world that sort of lives in its own ether. However, throughout, Baz's respect for the words of the Bard never allowed it to get muddied. He saw that the story and the characters always kept their roots based very accurately in the play. So, in fact, the icons of the created world and words themselves come to help each other."

This use of modern symbols also informed the production and costume design. In certain respects, the created world afforded production designer Catherine Martin and costume designer Kym Barrett an incredible amount of aesthetic latitude, but their creations were always firmly tethered to Shakespeare's words, story and to some extent, to the playwright himself.

"For me, the created world came down to the fact that Shakespeare's plays were always a bit of a pastiche. They were never one pure period. He never went to Verona and studied in detail the workings of Verona society when he wrote Romeo and Juliet.' It was his vision, as an Englishman, of this mythical, Italianate country, where everyone was passionate and hot-blooded," production designer Catherine Martin theorizes. "I think the created world is basically about devising situations or environments in which people could believe that the action could take place. I call it The Buy Factor.' Do you buy that this could happen, that this could exist, in the context of the script? It's been a really interesting process because if you're true to the script and just try to tell the story as clearly as possible, the created world actually occurs. It evolves organically out of the needs of the script because, essentially, the Verona in which Shakespeare set his play was a created world itself."

For example, several pivotal scenes in Luhrmann's script take place in Juliet's bedroom. As was the custom during Shakespeare's time, few stage directions accompany the text, and the Bard certainly never detailed the decoration of Juliet's chambers. Martin had to produce a setting that would immediately relay certain elements about Juliet and the Capulets in a visual language that would support the spoken one. The result is a spacious, high-ceilinged, powder blue and pale yellow room, framed by French windows with blue and white filigreed curtains that open out to the famous balcony. A large canopied bed, piled with quilts fills the room, its mahogany headboard placed beneath an ornate altar to the Virgin. Yet this is very much a young girl's room -- a legion of pastel-colored, porcelain saints keep company with a cadre of fluffy stuffed animals and a collection of dolls. Among the religious votives are tiny, brightly colored paintings, a smattering of books and photographs, a hot-pink boom box and a beginner's computer, the sum of which comprises the inexplicably precious treasure of a little girl.

"I've tried to simplify it," continues Martin, "so that when people see the sets, they think of a rich girl's bedroom with religious iconography in a place where religion is still important and the trappings of wealth aren't embarrassing. The plan was to convey ideas through the sets in a way that wasn't very subtle, that was very clear, so that people will know instantly where they are and will be able to concentrate on the language the actors are speaking."

Martin adds that the creative team essentially followed Shakespeare's lead; "...he used whatever language, whatever action he needed to illustrate character and story point." In fact, Shakespeare wrote long before the arrival of dictionary and standardization of grammar and, as Anthony Burgess points out in A Mouthful of Air, "As for meaning, an empirical consensus prevailed, with no tablet of the law to lay down the definitions. The question as to whether a word existed -- that is, was authorized by some remote linguistic authority -- never arose. If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up."

Martin compares the created world to the "heightened reality of a Fellini film, specifically the way Fellini used incredible dream sequences in very real situations. They are always extraordinarily well-observed. Even if the circumstance is alien or dreamlike, his observations are absolutely accurate reflections of real-life. I always thought that however magnified the situation was, the audience must be able to relate to all the characters and the events happening to them."

One of Martin's showpiece sets, the grand ballroom in the Capulet mansion, became the site of one of the film's more Fellini-esque scenes. Built on Stage One at Mexico's famed Churubusco Studios, the ballroom was a huge, decadent, ostentatious temple to the god of avarice. It featured a broad "marble" staircase, reminiscent of the staircases in "Gone With The Wind's" Tara, or in Xanadu, from "Citizen Kane." Above the staircase landing, in the center of the room, hung an immense painting of the Madonna and Child, in tones of gold and crimson. Faux-Roman pillars supported deep red walls, decorated with ornate, golden cherubim and foreboding, eyeless masks, molded into frozen, glittery smiles. Midas-touched statues of mermaids blowing tritons that served as lamp fixtures guarded the foot of the stairs. A giant, gilded two-story candelabrum, supported by the Three Graces, stood nearby. Two behemoth mirrors, encased in ornate golden frames, faced the staircase, and elaborate, dark oil paintings, depicting biblical scenes, dotted the scarlet walls. The Capulet herald, a baroque, stylized cat bearing the words "virtue," "honor," "Dios" and "fuerza," was inlaid into the floor.

This ballroom was the site of the Capulet's masked ball, a pivotal scene because it is the setting in which Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love. The garish set, which featured actual museum pieces, such as the Three Graces, provided a stark contrast to the purity of the two young lovers.

"The ballroom set was a way of contrasting the simplicity of Romeo and Juliet and their love to the harshness of the world that surrounds them -- a world that is more concerned with appearances. It also makes it very clear that there is a reason they are together. They are both outsiders in the extraordinarily over-the-top-place."

The guests attending this extravagant soiree were as lavish and debauched as the surroundings, thanks to the work of costume designer Kym Barrett and the hair and make-up team, headed by Aldo Signoretti and Maurizio Silvi, respectively. They transformed 150 extras into shimmering, mesmerizing creatures of the night: twin flappers in pink sequins, batting fuchsia-hued eyes; gold-encrusted fauns; a neon hippie with waist-length tangerine-colored hair; a phalanx of Roman soldiers in gold sandals with billowing lame capes; sturdy toy soldiers; and harem girls swathed in aqua gossamer. Clown-like make-up in shades of green, black, purple and red, adorned lips sipping from giant coconuts, festooned with little umbrellas and plastic fetishes. Elaborate hats, headdresses and massive collars competed for space with hairdos lacquered into origami-styled, gravity-defying shapes and designs.

"Baz told me that he wanted the look of the party to be a bit sinister, not all fun and frivolity," Barrett recalls. "He wanted Romeo and Juliet and the audience to walk into a grotesque, Bacchanalian example of what their parents' world is. To achieve that, I used three influences. One was that Seventies Satyricon feeling. I also looked through a lot of black and white photos of Victorian fancy dress parties and I also turned to silent movies. Catherine had designed walls in very dark reds and so I thought, ok, if I make really strong silhouettes with the costumes, using very strong colors and we spend a lot of time on their hats and hair and they wear extraordinary make-up, then these people will look gaudy and ornate and slightly sinister and dark. Coming out of the darkness into this monstrosity, Romeo and Juliet would seem almost other-worldly."

For this masked ball, Barrett deliberately dressed the principal players in costumes that reflected exaggerated versions of their personalities: Gloria Capulet became a bejeweled Cleopatra, strapped into a golden corset, an enormous black wig crowning her head. Her husband appeared as a drunken Caesar in a sparkling plum-colored toga. Dave Paris, the clean-cut, ambitious suitor, arrived as an astronaut and the menacing, explosive Tybalt was Mephistopheles himself.

This reflection of the characters' natures represented Barrett's contribution to the created world. Through her costumes, she visually defined the characters for the audience as explicitly as possible.

"For me, this film is more of a character-driven piece, as opposed to a style-driven piece," she shares. "What I tried to do, after talking with Baz, was convey the universal qualities of each character. Everyone knows these characters. They may recognize them in a different form or age group, but they are figures who appear in every type of society, every social strata, every family. So, what I attempted to do was impart the subconscious impression of this person, the feeling this person gives out. My job was to make that feeling expand across as wide an audience as possible, so that people will identify with them, so they'll say, I get that, I know that character, I know someone like that.'"

Based on Luhrmann's interpretation of Gloria Capulet, for instance, Barrett looked to the 1950s for some of her wardrobe.

"She's fairly high-strung, is in a repressed relationship, is probably lonely, feels that her husband doesn't love her and her daughter is growing up and their relationship is strained, but she can't really change her situation because her role is that of the decorative, obedient bride. So, to communicate those things, we looked towards the Fifties to a time when women were oppressed and cosseted, when the husband was boss and religion and social mores dictated your place in life. We haven't made her into a Fifties character, but there are certain elements that I've put into the costumes that give a feeling of that period."

Barrett reasons that the use of such apparent details and visual particulars will define both the characters and Shakespeare's language.

"The language, for most people, is a little daunting at first. In most movies, what people say conveys the facts, but in this it will take the audience some time to get into listening to the language and relaxing into the rhythm of it. What I tried to do with the costumes was to help smooth the way. The first information they may get is through what they see. The language will reinforce what they see and, sooner or later, the audience, hopefully, won't be able to tell which came first. At one point during the story -- and for everyone, it'll be a different place -- the language and the visual information will become interchangeable. They won't actually have to think what a rose by any other name' means; it will just be clear. That will be the liberation for the audience. It's like the moment when you're learning a new language and, one night, you dream in that language and understand it. It's that click of consciousness."

Luhrmann's cinematic translation of the play constantly triggers that "click of consciousness," as classic characters, props and scenes become literal embodiments of Shakespeare's words. "Everything was about revealing the language, making it less distant and more potent," Luhrmann comments. For instance, Shakespeare alternately refers to Romeo's enemy Tybalt as the "Prince of Cats" and "King of Cats" and alludes to his quick, feral and deadly prowess with the sword. In WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET, Luhrmann retains the words but also describes them visually, outfitting John Leguizamo's Tybalt in ominous, shiny, ebony boots, with thick, slick silver heels, embossed with his trademark cat symbol. Indeed, much of his wardrobe, Barrett notes, "has a feline line to it. The texture of his clothes, the fabric is reminiscent of the shininess of cat fur." Luhrmann also accentuated Tybalt's catlike heritage in the choreography of his much-heralded "swordsmanship." In the film, modern, specially-designed guns replace the Elizabethan blades, but, as armourer Charlie Taylor points out, "all the guns have names of edged weapons, like sword 22, series S,' or the rapier model or a dagger 9' classification, so we didn't have to change the play."

The young Turks of Elizabethan times would have mastered their swords at a very young age and would have carried their weapons with them at all times. Accordingly, the actors playing the Montague and Capulet boys also had to be able to skillfully manipulate their guns. Most of them studied for two months prior to filming, learning the ballet of gunplay -- the quick draw and recovery, butterfly and windmill twirls, over-the-shoulder tosses and the flinty stare through an infrared site aimed at the hapless victim. By the end of production, the actors had become so proficient that they absently performed astonishing tricks with their prop guns while waiting for the next shot.

In order to perform Tybalt's nimble and lethal fighting techniques, John Leguizamo not only trained with his gun, but also developed a singular style of wielding it, with the help of choreographer John "Cha-Cha" O'Connell and gun expert Alex Green. The resulting movements were a graceful and muscular cross between Flamenco dance, bullfighting and fencing, all combined with Elizabethan honor.

"What Baz did was correlate gunplay with swordplay, so our characters still have to play by the codes of the Elizabethan era," Leguizamo explains. "You can't shoot somebody in the back, if you're in a duel, you have to do it with one round in the gun. You can't just shoot somebody for no reason, you have to be provoked. My character, Tybalt, is very proud and he went to the Spanish school of fighting. He's got a bullfighting/Flamenco flair every time he shoots."

Combining this gunplay with Elizabethan elegance proved to be a considerable challenge for Leguizamo. "I trained really hard, to do all the butterfly spins, but, in the beginning, I kept dropping the guns on my feet and smashing myself in the face. Guns would be crashing and falling all over the house. Now, I'm addicted to it. I've found a new career for myself. I can do shows in Vegas now. I have a new special skill ... I do accents, I do Elizabethan and I do gunplay."

Harold Perrineau, who portrays Tybalt's nemesis, Mercutio, had to equal Leguizamo's skill with weapons. Perrineau's background, which includes dance and Kung Fu Wu-Su, helped him immensely.

"I was a dancer for a long time before I started acting," says Perrineau. "I studied with Alvin Ailey and I've also been training in martial arts for five years, so I think that really helped with a lot of the tricks involved with the guns -- twirling, dancing, fighting. It helped me be a lot more physical and I think Mercutio is completely a physical, emotional being."

It was no accident that Perrineau associated Mercutio's persona with his quicksilver use of his gun. The weapons Elizabethan nobles carried were also very personal extensions of their characters and families. Such swords would bear elaborate decoration. Accordingly, the rival Montagues and Capulets brandished guns with beautiful, idiosyncratic adornments, everything from transparent handles revealing a cache of golden bullets to a pearl grip bearing the family crest to the serene image of the Madonna up against the cold curl of the trigger.

3/5